


With the Voltage Running Through Her

by SkepticalTrees04



Series: Of Conwoman and Thieves (fem!neal caffrey) [2]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Attempted Sexual Assault, Female Neal Caffrey, Flashbacks, Gen, I don't really know - Freeform, I totally forgot about her, It's very vague, Minor Character Death, No Kate, or Mutants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27611458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkepticalTrees04/pseuds/SkepticalTrees04
Summary: Storms swirled in her eyes and electricity crackled in the air whenever she smiled.
Series: Of Conwoman and Thieves (fem!neal caffrey) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033650
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	With the Voltage Running Through Her

The night Neal Bennett was born a storm began brewing.

The slightly-polluted air of St. Louis smelled of rain and electric currents as raindrops began falling from the great beyond.

Thunder crashed through the air as her mother's body contracted and lightning struck, causing the lights to flicker, as her daughter gave her first cry.

Neal was swiped away from her mother, who was still breathing heavily, and into the sterile gloved hands of the nurse.

  
It was only when the child reentered her mother's hands the storm seemed to cease. The dark clouds that carried thunder and lightning quickly retreating to the north.

The storm didn't stop that night.

It was just the beginning.

When her father leaves, the sky turns pitch black with large chunks of ice and hale that fall from the dark void above them. The winds pick up, causing loose papers and trash to dart through the air at high speeds.

That doesn't stop a four-year-old Neal from sitting on the front steps of their apartment building. 

She sits there on the steps, not showing any awareness of the extreme conditions around her, staring at some non-existent spot straight ahead. 

The hale and rain seem to avoid her, like oil and water. The ground around her is soaked and freezing, yet she shows no signs of being remotely wet.

If one were to look even closer you could see the small, salty droplets rolling down her cheeks that still contained a bit of baby fat before falling off her face. Her eyes show no sign of the tears, remaining the same electric blue color as the lightning that was streaking across the sky.

The storm would be the worst in decades. It lasted for almost two weeks and would flood several families out of their homes. It would be the most powerful storm to ever hit Saint Louis for years to come.

During those two weeks, Neal Bennett got her first alias.

Danielle Brooks was born.

When she turned nine, she started seeing through the cracks in her life. 

  
She noticed how her mother came home early in the morning with the scent of cheap alcohol on her breath, clinging onto the arm of some man she had met the previous night. Her mother's giggles were high-pitched and grating to her ears as she led the man into the other room their apartment had.

Danielle scowels, grabbing her shoes and her old coat, and slammed the door behind her.

Aunt Ellen had warned her multiple times not to go outside by herself, always casting nervous glances at her unresponsive mother. She didn’t care at the moment, only wanted to get away from the broken reality she called home.

It was as sunny as the city could get during the colder months, and she shivered as she walked down the street, paying little attention to the occasional person she would brush shoulders with.

Danielle didn’t know how much time had passed, but when she felt a presence following her. She glanced over her shoulder, spotting a creepy looking man and confirming her suspicion.

She began to walk faster, trying to get some distance between the two of them. She turned into what she assumed was a side street, only to crash into the chipped brick wall of an alley. She pulled herself off of the frozen concrete and turned around, running into the man who had been following her. His dark eyes were unfocused and dilated, and his breath stank of nicotine and garbage. His mouth cracked into a smirk revealing his yellow, decaying teeth.

  
“Whatcha crying for, girlie? I ain’t even done nothing.” He slurred, placing a heavy hand on her shoulders. She hadn’t noticed until he pointed it out but tears were slipping from her eyes, tiny shoulders quaking underneath the suffocating weight of his hand. The hand squeezed and began making its way down her arm and Danielle began crying in earnest. 

  
Her mother, lost in a haze, had once told her not to struggle, that it wouldn’t hurt as much. When Neal asked Aunt Ellen what she meant, she scowled and told her in no uncertain terms that she was to keep fighting until hope was lost and not even stop then. The next day she returned with a switchblade for her to keep in her pockets and demonstrated how to properly use it. Danielle slid a hand into her coat pocket and realized with horror that it wasn’t there.

  
She had left it in her room, not bothering to get it when she stormed out in a hurry. 

  
When the man reached down to touch her there, she decided that as terrible as her day had been this was not going to be the icing on the cake.

  
She screamed, knocking his hand away with as much force as she could muster, and tried to escape. When his hand knotted itself into her hair and pulled her back, too many tears filled her eyes to see the evil glint in his eyes.

  
She couldn’t see it but she could hear the sudden all-encompassing ba-boom of thunder, felt it echoing around her. Light flashed, hot and bright and familiar, behind her eyes a split second before the thunder hit. The energy was running through her veins, lighting her up from the inside and making her feel powerful.

  
The man fell backward, hitting the dirty trash-ridden alleyway with a splat! Organs and blood alike bursting out of his burnt corpse. Danielle opened her eyes, lightning flashing in them, and smiled as the tears dried. The sky ripped open and rain gushed out in torrents, unstoppable in its advance to the streets. 

  
Danielle scampered out of the alley, hair plastered against her cheeks, and watched as the harsh descent of the rain washed away any evidence of the man down the storm drain, before calming down and turning into a drizzle that warmed her to her core.

  
She would spend the next few months scouring the fantasy and science fiction section at the public library until her mother became unable to take care of herself. Her mother had gotten to the point where she couldn't even recognize her daughter. 

  
Danielle didn't know if it was from the bottle she always had within her reach or the cancer that had been eating away at her once sharp mind for as long as she could remember.

  
Danielle started to spend her time at the local pool hall where she won enough money hustling to get her mother pain medication and food for both of them. The thoughts of lightning that used to echo in her mind like the deafening clap of thunder faded as she started focusing on school and work. 

Then on her eighteenth birthday, Ellen told her the truth.

Ellen told her how her father was arrested on that stormy night, how her real name was Neal Bennett, and of the power that had been passed down, through the generations.  
How the dark clouds that always seemed to form when she was angry wasn't a coincidence.

How her memories from the late-night walk she had taken years ago weren't just a dream.

She couldn't blame Ellen for not telling her about her father, but the uncontrollable power that flowed through her veins?

That was the final straw.

When she left Saint Louis, there was no flashy storm or uncontrollable rain. There was only the faint smell of rain and a light breeze that swept through the blistering hot streets.

For years to come there would be none of the violent, angry storms inhabitants of Saint Louis were used to having.

She soon discovered her powers were tied to her emotions. Whenever she felt too strongly, the storms would arrive. Small drizzly sunshowers for positive, dark thunderclouds for rage or desperation, and pouring rain to remind her of the one memory she had with her father before he left.

  
She must have been two or three when he had wrapped her in his old leather jacket that smelt of gunpowder and the toasty scent of home and taken her to the roof of their apartment building.

He held her in his arms as she stared around in fascination. The wind was whipping her hair everywhere, tangling her curls to the point that it took her mom several hours to undo, and the rain was coming down so hard that it hurt.

Later, she would wonder if her Dad knew about her powers if maybe he had them too. It would be too late to find out either way.

Consequently, she headed to New York, the city that never sleeps.

For a while, the blinding lights of the city replaced the white-hot lightning that accompanied her.

But New York wasn't cheap, and remembered the pool halls she had hustled and the fake IDs she had dabbled-in.

She began doing some forgeries and scams, small enough to keep her off the police's radar but big enough to keep her off the streets.

But then she met Mozzie.

After only a few cons and scheme's the little man knew she was hiding something.

How he found out about the lightning, she would never know, but he somehow figured it out. He started telling her about how cameras could deactivate with lightning or how wind and severe weather served as a distraction.

He, of course, asked her she was an alien or a top-secret government experiment who escaped from a lab.

To which she responded with a cryptic answer and let him draw his conclusions.

The amount of small heists and thefts that they had been planning began to decline as they began to focus more and more on the carefully twisted lies that they fed their victims.

There was no more breaking into buildings in the dead of night dressed in all black armed with only the energy from within.

Now the elegant cocktail dresses and suits where her camouflage, and complex fabrications where her weapon of choice.

When Neal Caffrey is caught she knows deep down that she could get out of this mess with a snap of her finger or the wink of an eye.

But the lightning is far from her mind at that point, she doesn't even indulge herself in the dark fantasy of creating a raging hurricane with crackling electricity and tornado like winds until right before her trial, but she immediately pushes those thoughts away and remembers that she is Neal Caffrey. The infamous conwoman who is as cunning as she is beautiful, but would never hurt another human being. She immediately feels terrible for even entertaining such a terrible thing.

When she exits the court house hours later after hearing the verdict she lets go.

A storm that has been brewing for years resurfaces over New York City that night. It's not as strong or angry as the ones that had hit Saint Louis all those years ago. The winds aren't as furious and rapid as people anticipated, instead the wind gently lifts the fallen leaves from the ground and causing them to flutter through the air, surfing the current. The rain is gentle yet plentiful, watering and washing the dirty streets and buildings for days.

The storm isn't angry or vengeful. It's bittersweet and nostalgic, as if remembering a simpler time.

When Neal Caffrey's cell is locked for the first time the storm stops, leaving no evidence of itself. She feels the lingering siren call of the storm begin to fade as a single tear falls from her now dull blue eyes.

She lifts her head up to the smooth beige ceiling and envisions the clouded sky.

She, of course, often wondered how she got her powers. When she had gotten arrested and spent four years staring at the cold cement wall of her small cell, her mind began to wonder. 

What if it was magic?

Or maybe it was some supergene, like in The X-Men.

What if she was experimented on by the government without her knowing?

At that point, Neal stopped for a minute and realized she was beginning to sound like Mozzie. She forced herself to snap out of the thoughtful trance before she started wearing a tinfoil hat or commenced an insane rant about "what was in the water."

Nonetheless, for those four years, the lightning and thunder rumbled within her bones due to lack of release. On quiet nights when the guards and prisoners alike were silent, she could hear the pitter-patter of rain and the deep bellow of thunder in the distance making her long for the freedom of the wild winds and freshwater that would pour down on her at harsh speeds.

When she only had a few months left on her four-year sentence, she became antsy. The energy that was all too familiar began rushing through her veins, filling her eyes with all of the built-up power she hadn't used in years.

Neal knows she had a problem when small objects around her began to vibrate or spontaneously combust into tiny balls of fire and smoke.

So she escapes. If she had known it was that easy she would have done it ages ago.

But when she gets out of the concrete jungle she had familiarized herself with for the past three and a half years she knows how to redeem herself.

She meets agent Peter Burke for the third time hours later. His fed-suit is covered in dust and shreds of paper that she immediately recognizes.

She smirks as a plan begins to form in her head as they trade meaningless conversation.

"Is it worth a visit?" she questions innocently already knowing the answer.

He hesitates only a second before responding. "Yes."

As the world explodes into shouts and large men in kevlar surrounding her she yells over the agents beginning to swarm her. "It's the security fiber to the new Canadian hundred dollar bill."

A smirk comes to her face as storms swirl in her once dull eyes. "Remember, one week."

As she is hauled, handcuffed and shackled back to the prison a joyful smile marks her face.

The air is heavy and smells of rust and rain.

The storm that started the night she was born ends just as her story begins.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this during a Nor'easter this weekend so it was heavily influenced by the weather. I decided to make a unrelated series of oneshots featuring female!Neal Caffrey because if there's one thing Happiest Season taught me is that the world needs more suit wearing lesbians.  
> I completely forgot about Kate until I reread it, so sorry.  
> If you have any suggestions on what the next installment of this little series should be about please comment!  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
